


iarnă

by itsmylifekay



Series: Pahar [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 08:40:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9540131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsmylifekay/pseuds/itsmylifekay
Summary: Snow coats the ground in a thick layer of white, dampening edges and lines until everything blends into one seemingly endless expanse devoid of color. It falls silently from the pale grey sky, small flakes that stick to pine needles and windshields, eyelashes and fence posts. Icicles freeze and drip and refreeze from the gutters, drops that slide halfway down the windows, condensation a thin mist on the glass.Addition to the Pahar series





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mokaiva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mokaiva/gifts).



> Thanks so much to mokaiva whose lovely comment spurred me to write a bit more in this universe^^ i hope you enjoy
> 
>    
> As before, the poem is Pahar by Ion Muresan

 

_Eo noapte feerică._

_Luna tremură galbenă şi rotundă în pahar._

_Îmi bag degetul în pahar._

_Apoi îmi bag mîna pînă la cot în pahar._

_Apoi îmi bag mîna pînă la umăr în pahar._

_Vodca e rece ca gheaţa._

 

_It is an enchanted night._

_The moon quivers in my glass, yellow and full._

_I dip my finger in my glass._

_Then I dip my arm up to the elbow in my glass._

_Then I dip my arm up to the shoulder in my glass._

_The vodka is as cold as ice._

 

Snow coats the ground in a thick layer of white, dampening edges and lines until everything blends into one seemingly endless expanse devoid of color. It falls silently from the pale grey sky, small flakes that stick to pine needles and windshields, eyelashes and fence posts. Icicles freeze and drip and refreeze from the gutters, drops that slide halfway down the windows, condensation a thin mist on the glass.

Bucky drags his finger through the droplets, two dots and a curved line, a lopsided smile that soon starts to melt as the moon shimmers against the snow. The glass is cold but inside the little cabin there’s a fire crackling in the fireplace and the heater on full and piles of blankets to burrow under. Inside, they’re warm. Steve pads over on near silent feet and puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder.

“Ready?” he asks.

Bucky takes Steve’s hand in his own. “Always.” His grin is as crooked as the one in the window.

Their hands separate and come back together with gloves in between, bundled against the cold as they trundle out the door and into the misty twilight of a cold winter’s night. Steve immediately pulls him forward, hat tugged down over his ears and scarf wrapped carefully around his neck and face (thanks to Bucky, with a complimentary eye roll from Steve). The air still bites at their cheeks and the tips of their noses but it’s bearable, jackets and pants swishing softly as they wade further out into the night.

The snow is almost up to their knees and everything is quiet, even their footsteps muffled as they leave dragging tracks in their wake, a scuffed up trail from their doorway to the open field just down what in the summer is a grass-lined dirt road. They stop in the center of the open space, Steve tilting his face up towards the sky and holding out his arms as if that way he can somehow take it all in, absorb the depth of the moment into his small frame and keep it there forever.

Part of Bucky believes he can.

Minutes pass before Bucky breaks the silence to whisper, “Steve, look.” Because there’s a break in the clouds and as the snowflakes thin and dwindle, stars appear overhead like twinkling specks of ice hovering just out of reach in a cold, dark sky.

Steve’s eyes twinkle like the stars.

Then, without warning and with hardly a sound, Steve falls back into the snow, arms still spread and legs apart, head pillowed by his hood and thick knitted cap. “It’s gorgeous,” he breathes, scarf slipped down past his chin so his words linger as fog in the air. His fingers twitch like he’s already sketching everything down.

“It is,” Bucky agrees. “But don’t know if it’s so beautiful that I want snow down my shirt.”

Steve wriggles pointedly, burrowing in deeper.

Bucky doesn’t know why he expected anything different, but he suppresses an exasperated sigh as he settles down beside him, shifting his weight to make a Bucky-sized depression in the snow, side pressed to Steve to offer as much warmth as he can.

Like this, the snow blocks out almost everything, ears awash with the strange kind of muffled sensation that comes with being underwater. He drifts, shuts his eyes and lets the swooping tide of their breathing drag him from his thoughts. Steve’s hands are still restless beside him.

“Buck,” Steve murmurs later, after Bucky’s become pleasantly detached from the world, comes back muzzy and blinking. The sky is once again pale grey and flakes stick to his lashes as he stares up to take it in. Then the sky disappears, replaced by Steve’s face as he rolls and crouches over the top of him. His cheeks are red and his eyes are bright, hands firm on Bucky’s biceps.

The snowflakes that kissed his face are replaced by Steve’s lips, feather light as they make a path from his temple to the corner of his mouth. “Bucky,” he says again, low like it’s somehow become a secret.

Bucky wraps gloved hands around slim hips.

“I love you.”

Snow falls and Bucky’s chest fills with warmth, Steve’s mouth a welcome heat against his own. Their noses are cold and the snow crunches with each shift of their weight, but it’s perfect.

Bucky loves him.

“I love you, too,” he breathes, words wispy and thin in the air.

Steve smiles above him, crooked like the one in the window. Bucky loves him even more because of it.

*****

“Alright, you ready to get started on the color?”

Bucky watches out of the corner of his eye as Steve nods and settles his arm back into position, eyes alight with the excitement and adrenaline Bucky has come to associate with Steve getting new ink. Bucky calls him an addict. Steve shrugs his shoulders and flicks him off with a tattooed middle finger.

“Yeah,” Steve grins. “The line work is already beautiful. I can’t wait to see it finished.”

The artist smiles at that, a middle-aged woman with wavy brown hair tied back in a bun, straddling her chair and checking all the inks and machinery before starting in again. A low, humming buzz fills the small space and Bucky leans back in his chair as he imagines a swarm of bees hovering just outside the window, sipping from long dead flowers and skirting over ice.

They’ve come to upstate New York specifically for this moment, Steve hunting down the woman currently bent over his right forearm in order to get the perfect piece to finish off his sleeve. They’d exchanged ideas and drawings and personal contact information and now here they are, Steve in _The Chair_ and Bucky in another, unimportant chair waiting for the next piece of art to come to life on Steve’s skin.

It’s abstract as always, black linework and watercolor blues. It matches Steve’s eyes and the Hudson river flowing underneath its sheath of broken ice just a short walk away. The same river that flows across New York, through sleepy old towns and quiet banks, under bridges big and small, the same one that spills out into the Atlantic and the world beyond.

It’s going to be gorgeous, Bucky knows it is. Both because Steve chose it and because it’ll be a part of Steve, who Bucky loves completely. But for now all he can do is wait, offering what support he can by being a solid presence in the room, offering distraction for the pain if it gets to be too much. Although today Steve seems to be doing just fine, talking intently with the artist as needles scrape across his skin, imbedding color where only pale skin had been before.

“You doing okay over there, Buck?”

Bucky looks up and catches the laughter in the corner of Steve’s eyes.

“I’m not the one getting approximately five thousand shots at once, think I should be asking you that question.”

The room is small and filled with books and trinkets, collections of a lifetime that’s now intersected with their own. It’s comfortable and intimate in a way they were both drawn to immediately, free to be themselves here as Bucky reaches out and flicks Steve on the bottom of his shoe.

“Done this enough times by now for you not to be worried, haven’t I?” Steve lifts a brow and glances down at his other arm pointedly. There’s a stack of magazines at his elbow, one balanced on his lap that he’s been flicking through on occasion. But he ignores it now to give Bucky one of his _Looks._

Bucky shakes his head, trying to sound put out and failing, not quite hiding his grin, “Yeah, yeah. Forgive me for caring.”

Steve sighs heavily and gets a forlorn look in his eye, “Won’t even let me take a dip in the river.”

“Not in the middle of winter, you’re not,” Bucky throws back.

“Spoilsport.”

“Pain in my ass.”

Steve flicks him off and Bucky matches him grin for grin, shrugging at the lifted brow the artist is giving them.

“It’s how he shows his love.”

Steve throws a magazine at his head; Bucky laughs at the picture of grumpy cat it lands on.

By the time Steve’s forearm is covered in plastic wrap and vaseline, in their rental car and on the way home, the sun is already slipping beneath the horizon in the first stages of those early winter nights. The snow loses the glare from the harsh daytime sun and instead glows with the last fading strokes of purpling light, turning luminescent with the stars.

Their tires crunch over frozen slush and make new tracks in freshly fallen snow, the glow from a stoplight making the world go red around them.

Steve’s hand finds his own for just a moment, wrists aligned and knuckles bumping as he pushes their fingers together just long enough for the light to turn green.

The radio’s on low and the snow is still falling softly outside, everything muffled and frozen sweet. Bucky can still hear bees buzzing in his ear.

_Totu-i vis şi armonie._

*****

Bucky’s hands are still from the cold, the rest of him heated and sweating, panting into the cold air as he throws shovel after shovel of snow away from the front walk. There’s snow on the roof, on the car, on the path, in his shoes, _everywhere._ He feels like he’s been shoveling for an eternity and the sky itself mocks him as it continues to rain down gentle flakes that brush his cheeks and stick in his hair with the utmost tenderness even as they slowly destroy any progress he makes.

He is Sisyphus and this is his personal hell.

Or it would be, if it weren’t for the fact Steve is still asleep inside, blessedly unaware of the work Bucky’s doing. (Blessedly not giving himself an asthma attack out here in the snow.)

As it is, Bucky forces himself to keep up a steady pace, determined to finish before Steve wakes up and comes stomping out with a righteous chip on his shoulder. The snow is already piled up around him in low, white walls made of the past week’s shoveling, up to his waist in some places and even as high as his chest in others. He adds more to the top, holds his breath when it looks like a particularly troublesome chunk might topple over. So far he’s only had one fall on his toes.

He hums while he works when he has the breath for it, mutters to himself to ‘lift with the knees and not the back’, and time passes. He thinks of Steve.

How he’d left him warm and soft in the sheets, face smoothed out and peaceful in a way Bucky hardly ever gets to see. Steve reminds him a lot of the snow; beautiful but dangerous; he may look like he’ll shatter like ice but in reality he’ll never truly break, only melt and come back together in the spring. That, and he seeps into every crack without asking and without remorse.

He has a sharp sense of humor, much like the _wump_ of snow falling from the roof into his newly cleared path. Muttering under his breath, Bucky goes to clear it, looks up and catches Steve watching him from the window, the wry smile on his face at the snow now powdering Bucky’s front.

Steve’s outside in minutes and Bucky barely has enough time to refinish the walk, chucking the shovel into the garage just as Steve tromps out the front door.

“I can help, you know,” he says.

“I know,” Bucky shrugs, “But I figured you could use the sleep. Besides, I’ll make you do the dishes later.”

He nudges Steve’s shoulder and smiles at the put-upon sigh Steve gives him. He knows his worrying can get under Steve’s skin, but the other man puts up with it like a champ. They put up with each other, really. It’s a mutual arrangement.

At that moment Steve looks over Bucky’s shoulder towards the roof then gets a glint in his eyes that Bucky knows to narrow his own at. “Not done yet, I see,” Steve says, strolling casually, _too_ casually, towards the garage.

And the ladder leant up against the side of the cabin.

“Not on your life, Rogers.” Bucky springs and grabs him by the jacket, hauls him back only to realize this had been Steve’s plan all along, Steve’s laugh loud and knowing as he uses their momentum to drag Bucky to the ground.

Snow kicks up into the air as they roll, warm despite the cold all around them. Their cheeks are red and Steve’s eyes are bright and Bucky knows this is the farthest he’ll ever get from hell. He lets out a groan as Steve settles on top of him, weight heavy on his hips.

Snowflakes fall gently around them.

“Te iubesc,” Steve whispers, leaning down until his hair falls forward, framing the misty breaths between them. “Я тебя люблю. _(Ya tebya lyublyu. I love you.)_ ”

Bucky blinks into the early morning sun and feels something warm fill his chest, “Steve?” he asks slowly. Steve hums lowly above him. “Теперь ты говоришь по-русский? _(Teper’ ty govorish’ po-russkiy? You speak Russian now?)_ ”

“Mm, no,” Steve leans down until their lips are just a hairsbreadth away. “Just that much, thought you’d like it.” Now it’s Bucky’s turn to hum. Steve nudges at his nose. “Do you?”

“Bien sur,” Bucky murmurs, can feel the brush of Steve’s lips against his own as he speaks. “Et je t'aime aussi. _(Of course, and I love you too.)_ ”

Steve kisses him in the space between one breath and the next, firm and unrelenting. The snow is forgiving and Bucky gives no resistance as Steve thoroughly claims his mouth, soft, needy sounds exchanged between them before Steve finally pulls away. But he doesn’t get up. His hands are on Bucky’s chest and his eyes are full of something Bucky can’t begin to understand, only knows he’s seen it on his own face in pictures and in the mirror, lays perfectly still as Steve stares down at him and shades him from the rising sun, blonde hair catching flecks of light.

They breathe in and out together and Bucky feels like he can feel the world thrumming around them. They are two trees tangled and inseparable, twisting towards the sky. He shuts his eyes and feels Steve let out a shuddering breath.

Snowflakes coat the world in an insulating white.

The moment fades and Steve climbs off him without a word, holds out a hand that Bucky takes without hesitation. Their wrists align just so.

Back inside, Bucky starts making hot cocoa and a new fire crackles in the hearth, welcoming them with its gentle glow as they settle back into the warmth and each other with a honey sweet-slow ease.

And days after Steve went under the gun, Bucky finds himself on the worn out old couch of a well-loved cabin, tracing the splashes of color with his eyes as Steve gently rubs ointment over the skin, coaxing it to heal with careful attention and sheer force of will. Cold toes twitch beneath his thigh. Snow piles up and sticks to the window.

 

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

_Totu-i vis şi armonie._

 


End file.
